Talk Back: Spade oddities top those on Earth

Friday

Nov 9, 2018 at 6:53 PM

Shocked by what happened this past Tuesday? Feeling disillusioned, directionless and hopelessly lost? You should have talked with us first. We saw it coming weeks ago. And like all good Boy Scouts, we were prepared. With sextants in one hand and star charts in the other. Two must-haves if you want to avoid going around in circles on Nov. 6. Better known as “Marooned Without a Compass Day.”

And here you thought we were talking about the election results. How droll!

Not that a compass would have been much help at the polls this year. For when the gales of November come early, giving the needle a spin and voting for the person whose name it’s pointing toward when it stops — Isn’t that the way everybody chooses between Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber these days? — was downright impossible. Why, it was so blustery that while we were standing in line outside the polling place, we watched Mary Poppins — her inside-out umbrella clutched in one hand and a partially filled-out ballot in the other — go tumbling across the sky toward Canada.

Until she suddenly disappeared as if she’d been swallowed up by a black hole. What other force is powerful enough to create a reverse bumbershoot?

You see, we know a thing or two about black holes because we’ve been dealing with them for years. Cellphones, keys and legal documents have a way of disappearing into them for all eternity. Now why can’t that happen to the stuff we don’t want? Like all those pesky bills that show up every month? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to set them down, wait for that giant sucking sound and voila! Problem solved. And housecleaning would be a snap, too. Why drop a half-dozen C-notes on a Roomba when a black hole is so much more efficient and fun to have around?

But the Poppins parrot-head parasol performance was only the precursor of what was to come. For Wednesday morning’s dawning revealed a barren landscape where a scant 24 hours prior there had been plastered a plethora of political signs. TV and radio programs were once again blessedly free of the posturing that had long dominated the airwaves. Proof positive, we figured, that a massive black hole was lurking nearby.

Turns out there is. In the middle of the Milky Way — a mere 26,000 light years away.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory recently announced that flares of infrared radiation they recently spotted coming from an orbital path near the center of the galaxy confirmed the existence of a monster black hole measuring 41 million miles in diameter. Intrigued, we tracked down their published findings — only to promptly set them aside when confronted with enough incomprehensible scientific jargon and complex formulas that even Einstein’s head would start spinning. That’s it, we thought. No more outer space forays for us. Until a couple of Harvard professors showed up on Monday and spilled the beans.

About Oumuamua.

A half-mile long, harmless-appearing cigar-shaped rock bearing a marked resemblance to a prop from the “Up in Smoke” movie, it had somersaulted past earth at nearly 200,000 mph about a year ago. A weird-looking comet or asteroid most in the scientific community asserted. Not so fast, the intrepid Ivy League duo responded. Comets and asteroids don’t speed up and change direction like that. More likely it’s a spaceship from another civilization.

Or an alien probe.

And all this time we’d been thinking that odd-sounding Hawaiian name was nothing more than a Freddie Mercury lyric at the 3:59 mark of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” You know the one. “Oh, moo-ah moo-ah, moo-ah mooh-ah. (Moo-ah moo-ah, let me go).”

Shows how much we know.

Normally we don’t put much stock in the notion that a bunch of bug-eyed lizard boys aboard a Doobie Brothers-designed interstellar craft doing Leaping Lanny Poffo-style end-over-end flips like Mary Poppins would journey all the way from the planet Tralfaz to invade li’l ol’ terra firma. But something about those flashes of light coming from near the black hole sounded eerily familiar. And then there were those reports of mysterious tripod-shaped machines dotting the hillside in Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

Hadn’t this happened once before? About 80 years ago?

Clearly the takeover has begun. As evidenced by Tuesday’s crazy election results. And the calendar confirms today marks the moment of truth. “Chaos Never Dies Day.” Meaning there’s only one person who can save us. Maxwell Smart.

Now where did we put that shoe phone?

Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 am to noon Eastern Time on WABJ, 1490 AM, Adrian, and online at www.dougspade.com and www.lenconnect.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.